Nanochip raises new funds to drive next-gen memory design

Memory technology developer Nanochip has secured another $14 million in …

MEMS (micro-electric mechanical systems) developer Nanochip announced today that it has secured an additional $14 million in capital via a third round of venture capital funding. Notable investors include Intel Capital and JK&B Capital, though Nanochip's PR also refers to "an additional world-class investment company." Nanochip's technology uses atomic force probe tips to read, write, and access stored data on the given storage medium. These tips are small—25nm at the contact point—and perform their various functions by passing voltage into the recording layer of the medium.

The use of these force tips will, in theory, allow a MEMS device to function like a multihead hard drive when reading data off what Nanochip refers to as a "nano-probe array technology." This type of storage array will supposedly surpass the storage limitations of lithography-based technology and clear the way for devices with far larger data capacities. Combined, Nanochip claims its two new technologies will ultimately surpass both the performance and the capacity of flash memory.

Nanochip makes some impressive claims for its technology, but a press release and a handful of diagrams don't equate to a commercially viable product. Company CEO Gordon R. Knight claims that Nanochip is "well on track to meet our original schedule of reaching full commercialization of our first product offering by 2010," but one has to wonder when that "original" schedule was actually drawn up. Nanochip was founded in 1996 (EETimes did a story on the company's second round of fundraising back in 2004), and the company largely seems to have made headlines since then based on its fundraising efforts rather than its technological investments.

The fact that Intel is willing to invest in the company does say something about the potential importance of its work, but Intel already takes a strong interest in the memory market. Last week, Intel and Micron jointly announced a new line of NAND flash that's up to five times faster than the flash currently on the market today. It makes sense for a company in Intel's position to take an interest in and possibly fund certain alternative memory technologies, but Nanochip needs to produce more than venture capital financing reports if it wants to be taken seriously.